What Makes an Employee Fit for Duty?

Fit for Duty is the concept concerned with ensuring employees possess the necessary attributes to perform their jobs effectively yet safely.

Specifically, these attributes are strength, flexibility and endurance. When they’re present, workers can perform their jobs safely and comfortably, without incurring injury. Fit for Duty is an important component of any viable risk reduction strategy and its importance spans workers’ careers from beginning to end.

• When hired on, does the new hire have the bio-physical attributes to safely perform the job they were hired to do?
• As the worker ages, are these bio-physical attributes maintained over the years such that the same job can be performed safely over the span of a career?
• If the worker is injured, and returns to the job, does that worker return with the physical capability to do the job safely and avoid re-injury?
• If the worker is transferred to a new position or department, will the physical stresses of the new position indeed be tolerated such that risk of injury is minimized?

Understanding that employees’ don’t always possess the bio-physical attributes to do their jobs safely is the first step in being able to mitigate this problem. From new hires to veteran employees, an integral part of a workforce being Fit for Duty involves maintaining employees’ strength, conditioning and endurance so the job’s physical stresses are tolerated. InjuryFree’s BEEA+ strategy is a comprehensive model for injury prevention that focuses on employees’ Bio-physics, Ergonomics, Education and Awareness.

Click here for more information on the BEEA+ model of injury prevention, and for InjuryFree’s unique approach to employee maintenance and Fit for Duty programs.